What I learned at court

We had court for Baby 4 last week. I learned that Kim Kardashian is proud of her baby bump and Drew Barrymore is blonde after being brunette for a while- all from the magazine I read in the lobby. I really should have expected nothing less. We go back in July. Sigh.

Our yearly recertification inspection was this morning. It went as planned. House is good. Family's good. Are you willing to adopt if the opportunity arises? Yes. That's good.

Oh....Baby 9- she's throwing me for a loop. I'm so in love with her. She came into care with no information about her family. Then we got some information and had one visit. Now we have no information again and visits are all cancelled. She has a newer judge who doesn't seem too warm or fuzzy for foster care, but also isn't known for crazy decisions. Everything inside me is yelling, "Anything can happen.", except my heart which says, "Go ahead and get your hopes up. She'll probably stay forever.".

Having a newborn is exhausting. Baby 9 thinks it's perfectly acceptable to be awake and ready to play from 1am- 4:30am daily. Baby 4 has taken to her pretty readily, but Baby Girl is not impressed. She wants to touch Baby 9's toes or hold her hand for a second, but then she wants 9 to promptly be placed out of sight. It's actually really funny.

Right now we are in the hospital with Baby 4 for surgery. He's had 9 of these since being with me. I am the only one here since Brandon is home with the girls and no one biologically related showed up. It's hard not to  feel offended on 4's behalf. I'm doing a really terrible job controlling my temper as a matter of fact. How dare you say you want this baby, but let someone you've called as tranger be with him every time he wakes up from anesthesia?!

Baby 4 has asked about adoption a lot since he came with us to Baby Girl's adoption. He says he wants to be adopted. He's asked what his name would be if he was adopted and we talked about making his current last name his new middle name- so when you say his full name, it sounds like we've just added our last name to the end. He wants to see the judge again and pick where we go to dinner afterward. We ahve been telling him that nothing will happen until after he's 7 years old, but when we go see the judge she can tell us if he can be adopted or not.

Then  there was the day where it looked like Baby 9 would be having visits on the same day as 4. I was talking to my Mom about our schedule and Baby 4 got really confused over why 9 would be visiting Baby 4's Dad. We explained that the visits are in the same building but the kids would be in different rooms- Baby 4 with his Dad and Baby 9 with her Mom. He said, "Oh, is Baby Girl going on a visit too?". I told him no, Baby Girl is adopted, not in foster care so she doesn't go on visits. Baby 4's eyes got really big, "I won't go on visits when I'm adopted?". I told him visits are different in adoption. Instead of going every week to a building to see your Dad, he'll come to our house for Christmas and to your birthday parties. We'll invite your Dad to all your school concerts and sports games, and we'll ask him to come with us to the zoo or mall sometimes. Baby 4 very promptly retracted all his former pro-adoption statements and let me know he will stay in foster care because he wants to go to visits.

So I shook my fist to the heavens because it's not fair that Baby 4 has to contemplate such big problems as such a tiny human. Then I cried because shaking my fist at the heavens is my only recourse in this whole situation.